War Games

Last week I had the pleasure of spending 8 days at C4 - short for the Combat Casualty Care Course - at Camp Bullis here in San Antonio. It was a triservice group (Air Force, Army, Navy) of mostly residents and a few nurses. Our lodgings were buildings called hutments that were nothing more than wooden shacks with 14 cots lined up in two rows. The first part of the week was mostly classes and work on mannequins for ATLS certification (Advanced Trauma Life Support). During the second half we marched around out the woods learning to treat combat wounds, transport wounded people, etc. They also had an old warehouse that they have transformed into a simulator for a street battle in Iraq, which was pretty cool. The meals were a mixture of Army cafeteria food and MREs (prepackaged meals with interesting names such as "Cheese Omelet"). A few of my buddies from residency were there with me and put our energy at night into organizing poker tournaments. Our efforts led to one Navy resident saying on the last night "You Air Force guys get a bad rap, but you're actually a lot of fun." All in all it was pretty good time, but I'm definitely glad to be back in the real world.